Day 77: Nostalgia Is Denial

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (2011)
Directed by Woody Allen
Starring: Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Corey Stoll, Alison Pill, Tom Hiddleston, Kathy Bates, Kurt Fuller, Mimi Kennedy

Have you ever been stuck at a party, politely sipping a cocktail, while all around you, people you didn't know go on and on about subjects of little to no interest to you?  You want to get away and ditch your cranberry apple-tini for a cold beer and find somebody to talk with about football, but you can't because, for some reason or another, you're stuck there, listening to a bunch of pretentious windbags go on and on about things you barely remember studying in college.  That's what it was like sitting through this movie.

The story is simple enough. A writer named Gil (Wilson) and his girlfriend Inez (McAdams) are about to be married.  They are on vacation with Inez' parents (Fuller and Kennedy) in Paris, a city Gil had visited many years earlier and is still enamored with.  But Inez's friends rub Gil the wrong way, so he goes for a walk through Paris at night.  When he gets lost, the clock strikes midnight, and a car pulls up, offering to give him a ride.  Reluctantly Gil gets in, and they arrive a party.  The strange thing is, everyone is dressed like it's 1927.  What's more, a woman approaches him and introduces herself as Zelda Fitzgerald (Pill).  He is then introduced to her husband, Scott (Hiddleston).  Later on, he goes on to meet all his literary and artistic heroes, including Ernest Hemingway (Stoll) who agrees to show Gil's novel-in-progress to Gertrude Stein (Bates).  While Stein and Picasso argue over the merit of the artists latest painting, Gil meets Adriana (Cotillard) and is immediately taken with her.  Gil loves this idealized world so much, that he goes back every single night, leading his fiancee to believe that he's fooling around.

All of this sounds pleasant enough, but the story is brought to a screeching halt, as Allen feels the need to pepper his script with arguments and discussions about the merits of certain artists and writers.  Maybe I'm just one of the ignorant, unwashed masses, but all of this art-speak and psychobabble went right over my head.  In fact, it went so far over my head, that I got bored.  The film is only 94 minutes long, but it felt like an eternity.  Woody Allen seems to be only capable of writing one type of protagonist, which is always a caricature of himself.  This time, Allen stays behind the camera, but Owen Wilson takes up the mantle of the neurotic writer wanting to see his art make a difference.  And Wilson is actually rather convincing at playing a Woody Allen type - maybe even more so than Woody Allen.

In fact, I was so bored that, at one point, I was tempted to turn off the sound and just bask in the wonderful images of Paris that this film offers.  The cinematography is absolutely amazing and the production and set designs are wonderful to behold.  Also, it was a treat to see all of the famous writers and artists from the 1920's come to life.  Of particular note were Corey Stoll as Hemingway, Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein and a very vivacious Adrian Brody as Salvador Dali.  We in the 21st Century will never know what these people were really like, but these interpretations were pretty close to the ones I had in my head.

This film basically boils down to being a self-insertion fantasy with some really great movie making skill behind it.  But it gets bogged down in it's own self-importance.  Allen seems to be more concerned with impressing the audience with his encyclopedic knowledge of Paris in the 1920s than with his skill as a film-maker.  And that's sad, because Woody Allen has been making movies for over 40 years.  We know how smart he is and how creative he can be.  But we rarely see any real cinematic accomplishments from him.  And here, he finally excels at being cinematic.  But unfortunately, those accomplishments are overshadowed by his own ego.

So while this was a fine film to look at, it wasn't all that pleasant to sit through.  I felt like it was made for a very select audience, and I wasn't part of it.  But if lengthy discussions on early 20th Century art and literature are your thing, then this is the film for you.